Celebrating Theology Faculty from the University of Nottingham: John Milbank

John Milbank is perhaps the most well-known member of our faculty here in the department of Theology and Religious Studies. John holds the position of Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics and is primarily a research professor, teaching only a few classes, primarily graduate level, a year. John has studied at Oxford, Cambridge, under Rowan Williams, and the University of Birmingham where he did his PhD under Leon Pompa on Giambatista Vico.

The two primary courses John teaches are Justice and Theology and Postmodernism (which he has unofficially renamed Theology, Philosophy, and Post-postmodernism. Both classes are a kind of reading interesting books with John Milbank seminar style classes. John also teaches on Proclus, Thomas Aquinas, and Hegel in the Plato to Hegel course.

John is more well known for his theological writings and a theological sensibility called Radical Orthodoxy. See my post ‘What is Radical Orthodoxy?‘ to get an idea of what it’s about and some seminal works on the subject. John is also the husband of Alison Milbank, featured earlier (see below).

Bibliography

This is really only a select bibliography, John has many other works out there. He also writes frequently for ABCReligion.

MILBANK, J., 2013. The ethics of honour and the possibility of promise. In: UDOFF, A., ed., Vladimir Jankelevitch and the question of forgiveness

I hope you’ve enjoyed John’s videos, you can find many more on various topics on YouTube. I also hope you’ve found John interesting. If so, and you want to read something by him, I highly recommend Being Reconciled as the best place to start. Theology and Social Theory may be his foundational work, but Being Reconciled is more comprehensible and much shorter.

John is an excellent man and theologian. I highly recommend looking around at his work and getting to know what he’s about for yourself.